The role of the researcher-facilitator in professional learning networks Open Access

Researchers studying system-level educational reform have found that teacher engagement in professional development (PD) is central to the success of educational change efforts (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). Thus, reform efforts need to support teacher professional learning if we are to make transformative shifts in education systems that optimize learning opportunities for students in schools. Across both the PD and educational change literature, findings suggest that teachers who exercise agency make changes to their practice and fulfill their sense of professional responsibility towards learners (MacNeil et al., 2023). However, attending to the complexity of improving teaching and learning in schools depends heavily on the quality of professional learning opportunities. Despite attempts at supporting agentic teacher learning for change in classrooms, researchers have recounted the ways in which well-intentioned PD initiatives have been insufficient for supporting actual improvements in teaching and learning (Hargreaves, 2019).

Innovation efforts often stall due to a lack of investment and ownership on the part of teachers. Top-down approaches to educational change do not foster agency in educators. In contrast, collaborative, inquiry-oriented approaches to educational change, such as professional learning networks (PLNs), move away from demanding change to supporting participants to define challenges, research solutions, develop relevant actions and engage in iterative cycles of action and reflection.

Because PLNs are structured to distribute ownership for innovation and learning across the membership, they require skilled facilitation. In contrast with PD where knowledge is transmitted to teachers, attention needs to focus on how PLN facilitation can support educators’ opportunities to construct new understandings about how to advance student learning (de Jong et al., 2019). In the research reported here, we looked at data from three PLN studies we have conducted (Butler and Schnellert, 2012; Butler et al., 2015; MacNeil et al., 2023, 2024; Schnellert and Butler, 2021) to answer the research question: What do researcher-facilitators do in PLNs and how do their roles vary across PLNs?

PLNs have been shown to have an impact across layers of a system at classroom practice, school and jurisdictional levels (Schnellert, 2020). PLNs are typically designed to bring together stakeholders who identify shared goals, develop plans, enact evidence-based strategies and collaboratively reflect on and adjust their efforts (Brown and Poortman, 2018). Thus, PLN approaches to educational change build expertise within PLN membership because they hold shared responsibility for advancing knowledge, practice and change personally and within their schools.

Literature on the design of PLNs suggests that teachers seek connection, inspiration and agency (Datnow and Park, 2019). This is especially true during times of change within an education system (Stoll and Louis, 2007). However, PLNs have also been critiqued for their potential to veer into neoliberalism, enacting policies and practices without inquiry, criticality or contextualization (Fairman and Mackenzie, 2015). While educational organizations and governments should support the ongoing learning of teachers to meet policy mandates and workplace demands, lasting change requires teachers to feel ownership over, and agency within, reform efforts. Thus, contextual aspects of teaching, learning, innovation and leadership need to be considered in both PLN facilitation and related research. Our research investigated how PLNs can be designed and facilitated in ways that enhance teacher agency and leadership capacity.

PLNs are defined as any group who engages in collaborative learning with others outside of their everyday community of practice to improve outcomes for children and youth (Brown and Poortman, 2018). PLNs require attention to five interrelated conditions if they are to influence practice change and advance student learning: (1) a focus on shared goals to foster a sense of shared purpose; (2) collaboration where members move beyond superficial conversations to re-examine their teaching and underlying beliefs; (3) reflective professional inquiry involving active and shared questioning of existing practices; (4) formal and informal leadership to support PLN processes and conditions and (5) group and individual learning (Brown and Poortman, 2018).

PLNs have been shown to be an effective medium to enact change because educators share their actions and innovations related to a common reform focus across contexts. Within PLNs participants can engage in systematic inquiry – identifying student needs, posing questions for inquiry, developing criteria for monitoring success, drawing on resources to enhance their professional learning and embedding evidence-based ideas into their practice (Butler and Schnellert, 2020). Ideal is when this professional inquiry includes assessments for, and of, students’ learning (Marshall and Drummond, 2006), offering opportunities for PLN members to identify student needs, monitor outcomes and adjust practices accordingly (Butler and Schnellert, 2008).

But questions remain about how to best construct and lead networks to foster teacher learning, practice change and positive outcomes for students. We need to know how PLN leaders can best facilitate structures that support educators to access and interpret evidence-based resources to enhance teaching and learning in classrooms.

Facilitators have a crucial role in helping individuals in PLNs sustain attention to student needs and cycles of responsive action (Gibbons et al., 2021). Not only can they provide support for sustained engagement in inquiry processes, but they can also balance the need for teachers to make choices about their learning goals and trajectories. Further, facilitators with expertise in an area of interest, for example a university-based researcher, are well-positioned to be a resource to content-based learning by offering new information and, at the same time, supporting teachers to construct new knowledge and practices (Cordingley, 2015). The work that researchers and teachers do together in a PLN has the potential to bridge theory and practice (Avalos, 2011; Schnellert and Butler, 2021). However, researchers may face biases from educators who perceive a discrepancy between their “real world” work and university expertise (Adair Breault, 2013).

Teacher leadership is a purposeful stance taken to positively influence others toward collective improvement of educational experiences. As such, teacher leaders are well positioned to facilitate educational change through PLNs. Lieberman and Miller (2005) found that teacher leaders play an important role in influencing – and facilitating change within – school cultures. Teacher leadership research has also studied the significance of teacher leaders’ identities as agents enacting change efforts in their own and others’ classrooms while working to enact school-level change (Stone et al., 1997). Harris and Muijs (2003) identified four aspects of teacher leadership – brokering, participative leadership, mediating and forging close relationships with other teachers – that play a role in facilitating effective and lasting change. Campbell et al. (2022) found that common aspects of teacher leaders’ work include a commitment to supporting the professional learning of their colleagues.

Making connections between new learning, student need and responsive instructional decisions has implications for resourcing professionals’ learning through guidance and tools (Borko et al., 2010; Hargreaves, 2019). In one example, Schnellert and Butler (2021) documented how teachers drew from the ideas of others, including authors of informational texts, to resource their inquiry-oriented learning. Such facilitation can strengthen the connections that teachers make between new learning, theory, practice and one another. Facilitation tools that invite educators to leverage opportunities for knowledge construction by connecting resources accessed both within and outside of PLN activities (e.g. professional books, colleagues, educator-researchers, student data), can stimulate their thinking and reflection on lived experiences to support new learning. However, concerns about educators having difficulty making connections between theory and practice (DeLuca et al., 2017) warrant increased understanding about how facilitation structures supportive of collaborative inquiry can assist individuals and teams to make impactful changes to practice.

In this research we used case study methodology because of its suitability for investigating dynamic processes that unfold over time (Yin, 2018). Case studies are also relevant for examining the interactions between internal and external influencing factors through connecting multiple sources of evidence in situ (Butler and Cartier, 2018). Specifically, for this study we employed a multiple case study design focused on three individual PLNs, each one constituting an embedded case (Yin, 2018; see Table 1 for Case descriptions). To select cases for this study, we looked across nine PLN studies for robust data related to facilitation.

To better understand the role of the PLN facilitator, we conducted interviews with participants and artifact (document) reviews to generate findings about how PLN facilitation was structured to support learning (e.g. from session agendas, powerpoint presentations, reflection templates). We also analyzed field notes from PLN meetings and activities, teachers’ written reflections and inquiry reports which provided traces of their shifts in thinking and practice descriptions in relation to PLN facilitation and feedback on what aspects of facilitation participants felt did and did not support their learning. Finally, we conducted interviews at the end of each study that included questions about the strengths and challenges of PLN structure, activities and facilitation.

As a first step towards data analysis, we read all data sources to get a sense of the “larger picture” and to ground each case analysis in a “holistic account” of the phenomena under study (Creswell and Creswell, 2018, p. 182). Throughout reading, we captured our observations in written memos. We then engaged in “first cycle” coding (for data condensation purposes; Miles et al., 2020) which involved assigning abductive (both inductive and deductive) codes to the data (Tavory and Timmermans, 2014). An example of a deductive code occurred when we anticipated coding for procedural facilitators which was informed by our theoretical framework. First cycle codes required subcoding and coding revisions within a particular thread of analysis (Miles et al., 2020). Next, we engaged in second cycle coding which required us to ascribe patterns to codes and condense data into categories and then themes often by creating visual displays (see Butler and Schnellert, 2012; Schnellert and Butler, 2021; MacNeil et al., 2023 for detailed descriptions of analyses).

In conjunction with our methods for analyzing data using typical coding procedures, we also took up analytic processes that allowed us to look for patterns both within and across each of the three cases. Within each case, we focused on facilitation to generate findings within that specific case. Then, we looked across cases for a priori themes related to facilitation. To do so, we constructed matrices to view data and our interpretations in one place for systematic analysis (Miles et al., 2020). To ensure validity, we triangulated data types, searched for disconfirming evidence, and engaged in co-coding to enhance interrater reliability (Creswell and Miller, 2000). Findings are reported for each case. In the Discussion section of this article, we make connections across cases and inform cross-case analysis with the research literature.

Drawing from our analyses we report findings related to the role of researcher-facilitators (RFs) from three PLN studies (Butler et al., 2015; Butler and Schnellert, 2012; MacNeil et al., 2023, 2024; Schnellert and Butler, 2021). In Table 2 we visually display the actions of RFs as identified through analyses. Overarching categories include nurturing collaboration and distributed leadership; selecting and offering theory, research and related resources; supporting cycles of goal setting, action and reflection; and designing and leading structures that build from teacher and student data. Later in the text we describe these activities and their significance case-by-case.

In Case One (MacNeil et al., 2024) we examined a researcher-facilitator’s (RF) role within a PLN where educators engaged in reflective practitioner inquiry over one academic year. Participants in this PLN were eleven elementary school educators who voluntarily came together to further their understanding about how to support students’ self-regulated learning (SRL; see Butler et al., 2015), during five after-school sessions. The RF who led this PLN is an expert in SRL. Analyses showed that the RF built from principles of effective PD to design the PLN to provide opportunities for PLN members to agentively construct knowledge through collaboration, access new ideas about SRL and make connections between research, theory and practice over time.

In an effort to position educators as driving their learning opportunities, the RF prompted teachers to consider the ways they would be deliberate in advancing their professional learning by: (1) reading/viewing/listening to research/theory and professional resources; (2) iteratively engaging in cycles of action and reflection (learning through practice with students) and (3) learning from/with colleagues. A key part of the RF’s facilitation of this PLN was to engage educators in considering and making decisions about how they would take up learning opportunities available to them both within and beyond the PLN.

In addition to prompting them to consider the ways they could learn by engaging and reflecting on research/theory, work with colleagues and mobilize ideas, the RF worked to optimize these mechanisms by inviting teachers to engage with new ideas related to SRL and providing structural supports such as reflective and conversational protocols during PLN meetings. For example, at the beginning of each meeting, teachers were invited to write about what they had been thinking about, the practices they were engaging in and/or what they were observing in their classrooms. This served as a structure to prompt individual reflection and also to focus the subsequent “air time” where teachers each shared verbally what they had been thinking, doing, seeing and wondering. During this time, the RF encouraged teachers to listen to one another for possible connections so that when they later met in discussion groups they could springboard from their shared interests and the challenges they were hoping to address in their classrooms. Then, at the outset of small group discussions, the RF provided prompts for teachers to consider the ways they could be resources to one another given their individual and shared goals. Small group discussions also centered on resources that grounded teachers’ conversations in principles of pedagogy with prompts to ground their conversations in their own experiences. At the same time, teachers were invited to consider how they could be resources to one another’s thinking (e.g. by selecting and sharing a resource) as they engaged in a supported process of co-creating knowledge. Indeed, teachers reported generating new understandings through their collaborative conversations. For example, one teacher, Kit, described how her discussion group made connections across the readings they shared with one another and built understandings together about principles of practice for supporting SRL:

Beyond meeting times, the RF also invited teachers to make connections between the research/theory they were accessing within the PLN (e.g. readings, presentations) and their practice contexts through the use of reflective tools that asked them to: (1) observe their classroom contexts and trace their experiences of trying out new practices; (2) distill the meaning they ascribed to their practice experiences, (3) articulate the plans they were making in response to their experiences and (4) describe next steps they needed to further their learning. Their foci in these reflective tools were tethered to the shared topic of SRL, SRL-related theory and research introduced by the RF and an ever-evolving inquiry question that each participant identified at the outset of the PLN and adjusted along the way (with colleague and RF feedback). Reflective tools provided teachers with explicit guidance on moving between inquiry processes (e.g. from reflecting on, to adjusting, practices) while at the same time providing participants with the flexibility to move iteratively between them (e.g. by refining goals). Thus, the RF supported opportunities for sustained and deep engagement in inquiry processes and full cycles of inquiry. Indeed, teachers in this PLN each reported completing between three to six inquiry cycles (from identifying a goal, to planning practice changes, then monitoring how students were responding, and adjusting their approaches in response) through which they described advancing their learning and practice. The most significant outcome in this study was teachers’ practice change, using resources and supportive structures, within full cycles of inquiry (MacNeil et al., 2024).

In Case Two (Schnellert and Butler, 2021) we examined a RFs role in the first year of an ongoing PLN. The RF led cross-school meetings with 19 participants from five schools, enrolling Kindergarten to grade 8. All elementary and middle schools in the school district were represented in the PLN. Participants were seven learning resource teachers, ten classroom teachers and two district administrators.

Findings were that the RF grounded PLN processes and resources in the practice and learning needs teachers identified for themselves. The RF facilitated discussions and activities in ways that were open-ended and required teachers to be active learners who: (1) made connections between ideas, (2) processed and personalized information and (3) acted on what they were wondering and learning. The RF structured activities to position teachers as generative learners, guiding them through creating goals and plans, reflecting on what they were doing and learning, sharing what they had done and developed, adapting their goals and making new plans based on what they were learning through cycles of action and reflection and drawing in evidence-informed resources. At the same time, the RF carefully scaffolded teachers’ cognitive skills and strategy use such as asking questions, critically reflecting, setting goals, making plans and problem-solving within PLN meetings.

One way in which the RF fostered opportunities for distributed learning among members of the PLN was in how he designed the PLN so that participants themselves were resources to one another’s learning. In designing the PLN to include school-based classroom teacher/learning resource teacher dyads or triads, the RF created opportunities for individuals to support one another outside of PLN meetings to bring during-meeting PLN learning to life. Part of the professional role of the learning resource teacher is to support classroom teachers in their schools and data showed that learning resource teachers from six of nine dyads/triads supported classroom teaching partners to enact practice shifts in their classrooms between PLN meetings. One tension that arose early in the PLN was discomfort regarding PLN membership. Some teachers were concerned about the two district administrators’ positions of power and influence – these teachers felt threatened by what they perceived as a potentially evaluative situation. The RF engaged the group in discussions about welcoming one another’s experience and expertise in an effort to develop a tone where each member of the community was perceived as a resource with expertise to share regardless of their formal role. Over time, district administrators’ offers of support were accepted by the classroom teachers and one district administrator became a classroom teacher’s implementation partner between PLN meetings.

The RF also designed the PLN with careful attention to the multidimensional ways pedagogical ideas could be shared through and beyond their meetings. For instance, the RF chose research-to-practice books that PLN participants reported significantly impacted their efforts at improving practice. Importantly, the participants described how the books helped them consider specific approaches, providing them with a springboard to imagine other possibilities for their own teaching. One participating teacher, Candice, explained:

In another example, one participant described how the resource focused their dyad’s collaborative actions: “The book was great … when we would meet, we would refer to that book and we’d come up with something new.”

The RF also showed how pedagogical principles introduced and explored in the PLN could be brought to life by sharing exemplars and modelling lessons. The RF shared classroom examples of practices during PLN meetings and taught a sample lesson to participants to illustrate an idea that they were reading about. In two PLN sessions the RF organized the PLN to engage in formal lesson studies (see Skott and Moller, 2017) through which the RF co-planned and co-taught lessons with a PLN dyad while the remaining members observed and debriefed the lesson together. Participants emphasized that seeing pedagogical principles brought to life significantly impacted their learning. Importantly, the RF purposefully supported teachers to engage in inquiry and explore and develop methods and practices that were situated and tailored to their contexts. As all K-8 schools in the school district had teacher teams participating in the PLN the entire school district moved forward in developing inclusive instruction. PLN members shared their learning with teachers in their schools beyond the PLN and many learning resource teachers co-planned and co-taught with additional classroom teachers in their schools to implement ideas. Significant outcomes in this study included conditions within the PLN that participants identified as supportive to knowledge mobilization and practice development including: having a shared focus, relational accountability, collaborative enactment of practices, sharing and debriefing, sustained cycles of collaborative inquiry, affective support, valuing diversity and drawing from expert others as resources (Schnellert and Butler, 2021).

In sum, the RF’s role included providing professional resources and pedagogical examples, and structuring meetings to foster inquiry and generative collaboration. Resources were selected and shared with the entire PLN, but also to individual teachers and dyads/triads. Of note, PLN members, particularly learning resource teachers and district administrators, acted in facilitative roles with classroom teacher partners. Participants found modeled strategies helpful for imagining possibilities in their own contexts, and also described benefitting from collaboratively debriefing modelled lessons in real contexts. Thus, findings from this study suggest that RFs themselves can, in addition to selecting and providing evidence-based resources to PLN members, be framed as a resource to the group and their learning.

For Case Three (Butler and Schnellert, 2012), we studied how RFs in one PLN supported educators to get to know their students’ learning needs, respond to them and monitor results through the co-creation and use of literacy assessments. In Case Three, teams of teachers (n = 30) from four schools (grades 7–12) came together to form one PLN focused on reading in a range of content areas (e.g. reading in Science). The PLN was located in a school district that prioritized adolescent literacy overall and at the same time emphasized schools’ jurisdictional decision making to set goals for their students based on what teachers in each context identified as important. At the same time, the district was working within an overarching provincial context that also prioritized literacy and assessments but allowed for schools and school districts to determine what assessments to use and how to implement data-informed goals (see Butler et al., 2015). As a result, the PLN we studied for Case Three was part of a context that shared priorities across layers of the educational system, allowing for the alignment of supports to teachers’ professional learning including the ways they built from data to direct their teaching efforts. For example, the district leveraged provincial funding to create positions for one school-based literacy leader (teacher leader) at each of the schools within the district. The district also offered a district-wide PLN for teachers and literacy leaders (both separately and together) to come together to build understanding about how to support adolescent learners. Specific to the current study, we analyzed the role two RFs played in fostering opportunities for data-driven decision making in this PLN.

In the Fall, RFs met with teachers and literacy leaders to develop performance-based assessments (PBA; Brownlie et al., 2006) which they paired with one of the RF’s assessments depicting students’ approaches to self-regulating their learning while reading. Importantly, the PBA itself served both as an assessment of student literacy as well as a PLN protocol. For the current study, we analyzed the ways in which the PBA process also represented a PLN protocol that was used to facilitate teachers’ discussions about the purpose of the assessment in relation to the goals they were working to advance for student literacy. RFs supported teachers to engage with students through the assessment process and provided skeletal protocols for scoring the PBAs. Scoring protocols supported teachers to navigate, negotiate and co-construct norms for scoring that would allow for standardizing outcome data to foster a common understanding of students’ grade-level literacy needs and monitor student progress in relation to their teaching approaches.

RFs aggregated data so that teachers had a sense of classwide student learning profiles in addition to the individual student information they gleaned from the assessment process. Leadership was distributed to school-based literacy leaders as they worked with their teams and the RFs, as needed, to interpret data, set goals and co-plan pedagogical responses. RFs facilitated (1) school-district-wide PLNs sessions, (2) a nested district level PLN comprised of each schools’ literacy leader and (3) school-level PLC meetings to support contextual data interpretation and goals setting (co-facilitating with the school’s literacy leader).

Taken together, RFs in this PLN worked with teachers and teacher leaders to support them in making decisions about the design and scoring of literacy assessments, which had implications for how teachers directed their efforts at shifting their practices and engaging in professional learning. Teachers’ evidence-based decision making was integral to their reflective inquiry as they worked in school teams with the RFs and school-based literacy leaders to make decisions about why and how to assess students, then reflected on what they learned through the assessment process to make decisions about how to shift their practice, and what learning they needed to further their goals for students. At the same time, assessment processes and outcomes grounded collaborative conversations in PLN members’ shared concerns for students’ reading in content areas. It should be noted that not all teachers engaged deeply with data and their colleagues, yet the facilitation of the teacher leaders at the school level kept them engaged as much as possible while still respecting professional boundaries. At a minimum, all teachers in the school-level PLCs implemented the literacy assessment and collaboratively set goals and made instructional plans. PLN outcomes in this study included teachers learning more about their students’ literacy needs, responsive revisions to practice, new insights about practice and increased student literacy (Butler and Schnellert, 2012; Butler et al., 2015).

This study shows how RFs – and teacher leaders – facilitated classroom-based assessment processes that also served as a protocol for establishing shared goals within a school and PLN. Further, this study illustrates how one PLN built from shared classroom and school-level priorities and district- and province-level supports to build up system-level capacity for addressing student needs.

Findings from this study show how PLN RFs can nurture collaboration and distributed leadership; select and offer theory, research and related resources; support cycles of goal setting, action and reflection; and design and lead structures that build from teacher and student data. These actions foster opportunities for educators to make connections between research/theory and practice. We highlight the crucial role facilitators have in feeding evidence-based resources into PLNs and building in planning and reflection protocols, which can support educators to engage in ongoing evidence-based, reflective inquiry. At the same time, as Cases Two and Three show, when leadership is distributed, PLNs can continue beyond life of a grant or study because educators have a sense of ownership and have developed capacities to continue the work.

These three case studies show how PLN RFs were instrumental in providing opportunities for teachers to step back from their practice and make evidence- and theory-supported meaning of their experiences. Findings from these studies emphasize the benefits in pairing educators’ in situ actions (e.g. trying out new practices; student observations) with space and support for them to pause and think about their experiences (e.g. with reflective tools; through conversations) while at the same time accessing and drawing theory and research-based resources into their thinking. Evidence across these case studies suggests that RFs are well-positioned to spur praxis-based thinking within PLN contexts. Reflective practitioner inquiry opportunities (Brown et al., 2021) were further extended because of how facilitators offered tools to bridge between in situ practice and PLN sessions by prompting and guiding participants’ systematic cycles of reflection and action. While much research has emphasized the power of professional learning that is closely linked to educators’ practice contexts for constructing knowledge and generating theory-practice connections, the research reported here illustrates how facilitators can carefully support research- and practice-informed professional learning (Schnellert, 2020).

These studies also advance understanding about how facilitators can position resources to support knowledge construction. While literature has centered the promise of well-designed PD environments that emphasize collaborative- and inquiry-based processes (e.g. DeLuca et al., 2015), less has been articulated about how knowledge-building resources can be positioned within them, and how facilitators can support educators to make connections between useful ideas and their practice contexts (Hadar and Brody, 2021). More specifically, findings from these studies show how relevant resources were injected into PLN activities and coupled with structures that supported them to grapple with ideas to (co-)construct meaning.

Findings show how facilitators made use of resources as sources for content learning but also attended to how they might be leveraged to enhance learning. In addition, because of their role as experts on the topics teachers were keen to learn about, the RFs themselves were a source for content knowledge, and their deep involvement with PLNs allowed them to build from teachers’ learning needs and ongoing practice experiences to support them in expanding their perspectives (Kyza and Agesilaou, 2022). Indeed, the research reported on here advances understanding about how experts can move beyond disseminating practices and theoretical principles to engaging educators in co-constructing knowledge that is relevant and meaningful for them (Schnellert and Butler, 2021). Taken together, these studies shed light on the work of boundary crossing PLN leaders such as researcher-facilitators who have expertise and resources to share (Grifenhagen and Jones, 2022; Onrubia et al., 2022), but who are also responsible for supporting educators’ agentic meaning making (Koffeman and Snoek, 2019).

Still, while PLNs are premised on the notion that collaboration is key for supporting knowledge construction and learning, the supported nature of the PLNs under study here align with research showing how collaboration in and of itself may be insufficient for fostering professional learning, and that collaborators may benefit from skillful support along the way (de Jong et al., 2019). Indeed, in these studies, findings showed how collaboration could be challenging, suggesting that successful collaboration does take effort (Rytivaara et al., 2019) and that individuals may require support to effectively collaborate (Sjoer and Meirink, 2016).

In these studies, specifically illustrated by the third case study, RFs supported PLN members to draw on data as a source for improving their teaching and student learning. Given their contexts, facilitators were able to frame data use as productive versus punitive. PLN members engaged with data generatively to set goals (Datnow, 2011), make plans focused on student need (Schildkamp et al., 2016) and iteratively adjust their teaching based on student data (Webster-Wright, 2009). This finding highlights the key role of PLN facilitators to support the use of student data as a resource for contextualized improvement where educators have agency in data use for instructional improvement, which can also be useful for system accountability (Møller, 2009).

These studies show the promise of providing educators with opportunities to enact agency (Ketelaar et al., 2012), leadership (Campbell et al., 2022) and, at the same time, access supports (de Jong et al., 2019). On one hand, educators in these studies had opportunities to exercise agency because they established goals they deemed relevant for their own practice contexts and that reflected their professional learning needs (Hargreaves, 2019). At the same time, through PLN structures (e.g. meetings), protocols (e.g. reflective tools) and resources (e.g. content focused), facilitators effortfully and thoughtfully balanced supports for teachers’ learning with processes that centered their agency. In Cases Two and Three, it is evident that school-based teacher leadership can amplify and echo the work led by RFs at PLN meetings. School-based teacher leaders – especially when they have opportunities to collaborate with PLN peers through co-planning and co-teaching - can support colleagues to enact plans and problem-solve in real time, spurring theory/practice synergies.

This study can help RFs (re)consider the design of PLNs to make more intentional decisions about their role, as well as to identify potential tensions, ambiguities and envisage new possibilities. Delving into the role of PLN facilitators in these three case studies creates an opportunity to reframe the role of the researcher (and any educational expert) in PD contexts. Analyses showed that researcher-facilitators in the three PLNs provided participants with opportunities to make choices about how to participate from the outset and decisions about how their learning unfolded. Participants were found to build from a variety of procedural supports and collaborative opportunities within and beyond the PLN. PLN facilitators offered resources that responded to participants’ learning needs. Resources were offered to build foundational understandings and continued to be an important source for fostering opportunities for new learning. PLN facilitation was not without tensions. Specifically, facilitators had to balance opportunities for participants to make decisions for their learning while still attending to the need to bring resources to PLNs to support new learning.

Our cross-case analysis adds much-needed empirical research regarding the role facilitators play within PLNs. Specifically, our study shows how researchers can facilitate opportunities for educators to bridge research/theory, evidence about student learning and practice. Evidence from these studies shows that PLN facilitators can play an important role in nurturing teacher agency and distributing leadership. In PLNs where facilitators share visible and tangible examples of research-informed practices, and promote and coach inquiry that includes practice change, innovation can be stimulated within the network, in participants’ classrooms and schools and across schools (Hargreaves et al., 2015). Thus, PLN facilitation can support professional knowledge generation, practice development and knowledge and practice exchange across schools, instilling agency and leadership within teachers, teams and systems.

Funding: Funding was received from the Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for two of the studies analyzed in this article.